Depression, deflation, budgets slashed, Chapter 11, layoffs and credit crunch are fires faced by the PR Crisis Brigade featured in the January '09 O’Dwyer’s PR Report, which deals with crisis PR. Many more fires could have been added, but there is only so much space that cartoonist Bill Kresse (picture) has to work with.

You know things are desperate when management icons here and in Japan are scratching their heads trying to figure things out. Toyota Motor, for the first time in 70 years, reported an annual loss due to an “emergency that we’ve never experienced,” said its President Katsuaki Watanabe, who doesn’t have a clue to how the global auto market is going to pan out. “It’s not yet possible to tell where the market’s bottom will be,” Watanabe said December 22.

General Motors, Ford and Chrysler cheer Toyota’s black-eye. They figure stingy and protectionist (of foreign car plants in their districts) Congressmen will finally get the message that times really are tough, tough, tough for the Big Three now that Toyota has chalked up red ink. Detroit’s turnaround is much more than selling a couple of corporate jets.

U.S. corporate icon General Electric is in the same boat (car?) as Toyota. CEO Jeff Immelt on December 17 said the business environment is the “toughest for people of my generation. It’s the toughest environment we have ever seen.” He yanked GE’s light bulb unit off the auction block, sending warm feelings through the bodies of members of the Thomas Edison fan club. Immelt says there is no way GE can provide a corporate-wide earnings forecast for `09.

Toyota and GE are noted for their management and planning prowess. If they don’t have a clue to the business outlook, what about the thousands of other companies they are reduced to pretty much playing it by ear? They will need all the PR help to get them through the morass, which is a good news for crisis people of all bent. 2009 should be a full-employment year for savvy crisis people.